


Surely Some Revelation

by Elleth



Category: A Redtail's Dream (Webcomic), Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Camping, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Magic Revealed, Trolls, Year 0 (Stand Still Stay Silent)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-09 12:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: The Rash Illness has come to Hokanniemi. A contingency plan of Hannu's leads to some unexpected revelations.





	Surely Some Revelation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuuago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuago/gifts).



> Soooooo... moving to some island out in the lake and defending themselves with crossbows, huh? ;) I'd meant to set it later, but these two tossers insisted they wanted to go camping instead.

Joona peered ahead of the boat at the small, rocky island that'd been called Anna-Stiinan Luoto ever since he could remember, just offshore from Hokanniemi. He weighed old Pekka's crossbow in his hands uneasily, while Hannu only grunted and dipped the oars into the water for another stroke. The bare trees - birches, Joona thought, and pine trees that stood with dark needles in between - lurched closer. 

"Who was Anna-Stiina anyway?" he asked.

"Don't care who she was, as long as it's safe. If people from Pekonniemi or Hokansalmi made it here first, pretend you got the Rash and run at them," Hannu replied when they reached the stretch of shallow water around the shore and left the boat sitting on a bank of sand and rocks crusted with ice. Hannu hoisted up a duffel bag of gear that clanked ominously while Joona shouldered his backpack. They began walking to the island proper, sliding across a sheet of hollow ice. 

"What if _they_ have the Rash Illness?" Joona crossed his arms. "No chance."

"They're _not_ getting our island. Stay in Hokanniemi if you want to deal with another… _thing_ wandering into tow- gah!" A crack. 

Joona had the crossbow loaded and pointed before he'd registered what had happened. Hannu glared and shoved the bolt pointed at him away, then pulled his dripping foot from the ice and gestured dramatically at the low sky. Joona might have sniggered at Hannu's misery not long ago; now he hardly felt anything except relief that it was nothing worse. 

"That thing you mean was one of Tuomi's friends," he said instead. 

"Says Tuomi." 

"Iiro, that was his name. And besides, have you seen the freaky glow-eyes Tuomi can do? I haven't, but Paju has, and I believe her. Jonna does, too. Even dad says there might be something to it, and _he_ has things he's not telling us." 

"So Tuomi is magic now. Riiiiight. Then how come he didn't magic it back to life and un-monster it? He probably found glowing contacts somewhere and is pulling everyone's leg like the little freak he is." 

"I dunno, maybe because you put a bolt of these through Iiro's brain?" Joona thrust the crossbow back at Hannu. He reeled and stumbled onto the shore proper, and almost landed in the waterlogged snow.

"I'm sorry, should I have let it go and eat Ville?" Hannu pushed himself upright and marched into the forest, plowing through shrubbery and bare blueberry bushes. "Or maybe it wasn't any more real than the Fox." 

Joona sighed, picking a path around the worst of the thickets, and sped up his step when Hannu didn't slow down. The fox issue still was a sore spot between them, but they didn't know yet whether the island was safe, and Joona wanted neither of them to be caught alone out here by anything. "Of course it was real. But maybe you could have only shot him a little, just enough to make him go away."

"Right. _How many_ zombie movies did we watch together?" 

"Depends on what you mean by 'watching'; does that include the ones we - " Joona made air-quotes and locked eyes with Hannu, who cringed and then looked away. " - watched?"

Red-faced and glaring, Hannu marched on, branches breaking under his boots. "Shooting a little wouldn't have stopped it." 

Joona didn't reply, and they went through the forest in relative silence. Finally he said, "At least he was the only one who… turned into… that. So far. I wonder how he caught it." 

Hannu scoffed. "His parents took him into the city to find a doctor when he caught a cold, that's what Paju said. They probably _thought_ he'd caught it, and then they caught it for real. Mikkeli was put under martial law even before the radios went out; it's a surprise they got in and out at all." 

"I know. I heard that Anu Kantanen's niece went to hide out on Saimaa weeks ago with her husband's family, on a houseboat - preggo woman, kid and cat and all. And tons of frozen pizza, apparently." 

"Pizza…" Hannu made a whining noise low in his throat. "The worst about all this is that there won't be any more pizza, ever." 

"Now you sound like Ville about hot dogs, except more insensitive. Besides, you never share your pizza."

"Because you all hate the way I like my pizza."

"Because you like it even more burned than your buns, _and_ you poison it with cayenne pepper. No normal person eats pizza that way." 

Still bickering, they entered a clearing, roughly in the center of the small island's broadest part, before it tapered out into a spearhead point. Hannu dropped his canvas bag into the snow with a rattle of metal parts. "Here," he said, massaging at his shoulder where he'd slung the bag. "This is the spot I remember." 

When they'd been younger, before dog-Ville had come along, and when Hannu had had his share of socializing - even from his best friends - Anna-Stiinan Luoto had become his retreat. No one had ever bothered rowing or swimming after him; a rock island didn't really hold much appeal, and definitely not enough to pull some prank that'd only backfire on them because his friends were the only ones who knew where he went. 

They'd been right; there was nothing much to the island.

Joona eyed the rocky ground with trepidation; it sloped to a small ridge in the center of the clearing and then tapered down gently toward the shores on either side. The water was visible through the trees.

"Don't you think that's too close to the lake to be good for anything? If there are monsters in there as well, this won't do any good." 

"If it gets worse and I build here, I build here, I'll put a fence along the shore, I'm not dumb. I'll cut down all these stupid trees for it. But for now I want to make sure everyone knows this is my island now."

"It might belong to someone, you know."

"Good fucking luck suing me." Hannu looked around. "I don't see any lawyers anywhere, because they're probably all dead." He began dragging a crumbling old log into the center of the clearing, and kicked at some loose stones under the thin snow cover that might have made a circle once.

Joona sighed and lent Hannu a hand in building a firepit. It was hard enough facing the mutant zombie apocalypse, but it wasn't made any easier by Hannu not giving him a break. Hokanniemi was isolated enough that the Rash Illness hadn't really posed a danger to them yet, but they'd had a town meeting in the church and agreed to stay out of contact with the wider world after Tuomi's friend had turned, and here Hannu was making contingency plans. 

It wasn't much like the Hannu Joona had known before the midwinter festival, almost a year before. Even weirder, how much standing his voice had suddenly had with people who'd never much valued Hannu before, or hardly even knew him - Junnu Kuitunen, and even weirder still, Kielo Miettinen, who'd both spoken up in his support when Hannu had suggested shutting off the roads into Hokanniemi. 

But even so, Joona couldn't help but… _like_ the annoying, far-seeing attitude Hannu had adopted since, though strictly speaking only the 'far-seeing' part was new. He had a feeling it might save all their skins yet.

* 

Dark had settled by the time they were done exploring the island in full. No monsters, no wild animals, and no one from Pekonniemi or Hokansalmi had found the island yet, and that was a relief, Joona thought as he fed branch after branch into the campfire they'd made and sipped coffee from the thermos he'd brought. Hannu was turning a stick wrapped in bun dough over the flames; it had already crisped and blackened in places. 

Over the lake, a few lit squares mirrored in the water; people moved behind them - his family's store and house, and several others on the shore that still had working generators, or other means of lighting their rooms. He could make out the strop of Paju's hair disputing with someone who might, going by height and build, be Jonna, and for the moment wasn't too sorry to miss that particular development. When he turned his head back to Hannu, he was chewing on his burnt bread. The stars were showing in gaps between the clouds; the moon sat like a fingernail sliver between them.

Joona shook his head. He was reluctant to disrupt the atmosphere, but if he was supposed to spend a night freezing his ass off in a sleeping bag and surrounded by a barrage of bear traps ("Seriously?" Joona had asked, and almost started laughing hysterically, when Hannu unpacked his bag) they'd spent part of the daylight hours setting up, he wanted to know why. "So what is the point of being here, except hiding from everyone again?" 

"To try and see if it's safe. If we make it through the night, I'll count that as a yes and move over here permanently with Ville. I don't want to deal with -" Hannu made a sweeping gesture with his bread that encompassed the village across the lake - "all of that. Ville can handle a crossbow, too." 

"That's nice," Joona said and crossed his arms. "So you're being an inconsiderate jerk to your friends again. Speaking of him, why didn't you take Ville?" 

Hannu scoffed. "He was scared for the turtle being alone. You know he lets it sleep in his bed and reads it the Kalevala as part of turtle training, whatever that means." He shrugged. "Probably just that he's a coward. And it isn't smart going out here alone."

"So not a coward at all." Joona huffed. Hannu insulting him was one thing, turning on Ville of all people was another, especially when wasn't around to laugh it away. "You're even more horrible than usual - why does it feel like you know something I don't?"

"Because I probably do, but you still don't believe me about the asshole Fox, so why should I tell you?" 

"Because I'd been meaning to corner you about this. I might not even have come with the way you've been behaving - but if you know something that is going to help the rest of us, you have a moral obligation to share it. And honestly, it'll work better if Jonna or Paju or Ville can't barge in and give you a chance to run." 

Hannu glared at him, again. It didn't faze Joona much, beyond the fact that Hannu had done a lot of glaring even for his standards over the day. 

"Calm down, Mr. High-and-Mighty, I don't know anything, okay? The world is going to shit and I don't want to have to try to... _survive_ all the time, that's all. I just want to live like Ville and I used to." Hannu went back to gnawing on his bread, but he no longer looked self-satisfied or smug, and Joona didn't like it at all, asshole or no. He pulled the stick of bread from Hannu's hand and dropped into the flames. The burnt smell that rose up was weirdly comforting; it reminded him of the store, work, and routine, and the way Hannu smelled sometimes. 

Before Hannu could complain, Joona put his coffee down and kissed him. 

"Let's at least stay warm," he said, keeping a hand in Hannu's hair to keep him from pulling away. To his surprise, Hannu murmured assent against his lips. Joona didn't let go yet, and a moment later Hannu reciprocated, roughly, yanking the tie out of Joona's ponytail and grabbing a fistful of hair. Joona bore them both to the ground, and Hannu let him. 

They settled into a rhythm of harsh breaths that misted around them and threaded through the campfire smoke, and Joona's knuckles were chafing against the inside of Hannu's fly when Hannu's head snapped up and his eyes opened. 

In the dim light, they were glowing. 

It wasn't a trick of the firelight, either. The fire didn't glow electric blue, for one thing. 

Suddenly Joona believed every crazy smidgen of the stories Hannu had gradually spilled to him. Usually that'd happened when he'd believed Joona was asleep and his secrets were safe to unload, at least after the first time when Hannu had actually made an effort, Joona had laughed at him, and Hannu had stopped speaking to Joona over the fox issue. He'd been communicating through Jonna, if he did at all - until Joona had shown up at his house with pizza and beer and some B-horror flick about some pandemic or other, just as the Rash Illness started picking up speed in autumn, and they'd wanted a break to laugh at what then had felt like an absurdity that'd be over soon.

It wouldn't be over. 

The realization washed over him like the bucket of ice cubes that Jonna had poured into his bed sometime in summer. If even Hannu had - changed; Hannu of all people, things would not go back to normal again. The silence on tv and radio, the power cutting out, the empty shelves in his father's store, the Rash Illness… they all meant something.

But for now, Joona could just stare wordlessly. Hannu pulled out of his hold to struggle to his feet, and beat his fists on his ears just once, before he reached for the crossbow that lay on the ground near them. So Tuomi wasn't the only one, and Hannu knew. He'd known all along. 

"Fuck," Joona muttered, more to himself than to Hannu, who wouldn't either listen or care. He tried to climb to his feet to see what Hannu was seeing - if he could! - but found his knees wouldn't budge, so he stayed sitting on top of his sleeping bag, staring out into the freezing dark, and then back away toward the village and its lit windows. The coffee churned in his stomach. "Fuck," he said again. 

"Sit still, stay quiet!" Hannu snarled without averting his eyes from the threat, or where he thought the the threat was. The light from his eyes spilled down over his cheekbones, making them stand out hollow from his face. If Joona strained his ears over his own breathing, he thought he could hear faint splashing that wasn't just waves on the edge of the ice, then the shuffle of something moving up the shore.

"There… come on, come out…" 

The clank and snap of metal, a glint of firelight on wet skin, a noise of pain. 

One of the bear traps. Hannu aimed, wavered for a moment, breathed out, and fired. 

A screech that abruptly cut off told Joona that Hannu hadn't missed his mark, but then he had been borrowing the crossbow from Old Pekka to practice through the spring and summer. Apart from the time he'd nearly hit Oona from the store window, and the bolt that'd punctured a front tire of Riikka's car, no one had really cared. 

Much better to focus on that than the fading glow in Hannu's eyes, or or the bitter stench of peat water and illness rising from the body, or the fact that the screech had sounded… almost human, but… not. 

*

"Who do you think this was?" 

Hannu shrugged, and even though the breath mask he'd dug from his pack after the thing had shown up hid most of his expression, Joona could imagine the corners of his mouth turning down. His eyes were wider than they should be, and he hiccuped through the forced nonchalance, a breath or two taken too quickly. "Dunno. No one of ours, I think. Don't want to think about it." 

It was hard to tell in the flickering light from the makeshift torch Joona was holding, really just a sturdy branch he'd pulled from the fire. "Iiro's dad? His mom is fine, she didn't catch anything, but he disappeared a few days after Iiro… you know." 

"No," Hannu said, yanking on the crossbow bolt that protruded from the thing's forehead, in between something that might or might not be… horns? It wouldn't come loose, and Hannu let go with a disgusted noise. "It came from the other side of the lake, not from Hokanniemi. Besides, no one there has a roe deer."

"What?" 

"Can we trade? I don't want any of this. I don't want to know these things!" 

"What?" 

Hannu turned and stalked back to the fire, tore off his mask and tossed it into the flames. "Stay away from that thing - you and Jonna got reindeer, I don't know if similarities mean it's more contagious." 

For the third time, now flat, while Joona took a few hasty steps back, stumbled up the slope and just about avoided falling into the campfire, he said, "What? Hannu… if you're pulling my leg over… over… this, I'll put licorice in your coffee until you become normal again." 

Joona stuck the torch back into the fire, pulled his mask off and set it aside, eyeing the bulk of the body halfway to the shore. It was dead, that was for sure - not moving, not breathing, and even if it suddenly came back to life, it was stuck in a bear trap and couldn't get at them. He pulled his sleeping bag closer to Hannu's anyway.

"You sound like Paju now. I'll explain if keep your dumb mouth shut. If you laugh, I'm leaving you here and going home alone." 

"I won't laugh." Joona laid his hand on Hannu's, squeezed. Hannu tensed, but he didn't pull away. "Not any longer." 

Hannu pulled his knees up to rest his head on them, but then shifted around and laid his head on Joona's outstretched legs instead, starting up at him. "As long as you keep that up," he replied. "I'm serious for once." 

It was clear that he was. 

Joona managed to stay quiet while Hannu talked; after all he'd heard most of it before, even if he hadn't believed it then, and maybe thought he'd dreamt most of Hannu's early-morning or late-night mutterings - almost, except for the dream about the moose that was giving his dad advice, and the monster in the woods, which he knew Jonna had also had - but that wasn't the first time for something like that to happen; they'd always put it down to being twins, and he'd dismissed Hannu's knowledge as Jonna spilling the beans about it.

Hannu went on, staring into the fire rather than at Joona, about how, when the Rash Illness started, he'd started… hearing… _things_ , when he was out in the woods with Ville sometimes, and how he knew that the things were pleading for help that only killing them could get them, and how he'd even known that Joona was going to drop by after their argument, because a spirit reindeer that was also him had planted itself on his couch. All villagers had them, he said, but only a few of them knew - Jouko, for one. At that point Joona was too caught-up in Hannu's story to even question that his father was one of... those people, and it explained what he'd been hiding. So far he and Jonna had always put it down to the situation lasting far longer than anybody had anticipated, not… anything magic. But it made sense, if anything still did.

Others, Hannu said, were Tuomi, Åsa, Vuokko Tikkanen, Junnu Kuitunen, Anu Kantanen, and Kielo Miettinen - the gravedigger hag - and Hannu himself. They were the ones whose animal spirits had attached themselves, or at least spirits of the same kind had, to the humans. And the dream meant, Hannu thought, that they could stay aware of it, and use their power. 

Sometimes, at least. 

Joona made himself listen to it all, a hand lightly in Hannu's hair, fingers twirling absent-mindedly. Hannu's face grew darker the more he talked, low brows and pursed lips lit by the fading fire. He held himself tightly-wound, and Joona wasn't sure if the shivers that he sometimes failed to keep down were from the cold or all the bottled-up things. Even someone like Hannu could only take so much, after all. 

He didn't get an answer to that. Instead, Joona fed the fire more branches until the flames came back higher. Oddly, even though his mind was bursting with too many questions to even make sense of one of them, Joona believed him. 

By the time he was done, Hannu seemed exhausted, his face slack and pale, but he had one more thing to add. "Oh, and dog-Ville wasn't hit by a truck and died. I made that up. Dog-Ville is human-Ville, that's how he came back from the dream." 

" _Now_ you're making things up." 

"Ask _him_ ; he's been dying to tell everyone." 

Joona snorted. "Poor choice of words." 

"Not if he didn't _actually_ die." Half a grin momentarily sharpened Hannu's face into something more like his usual self. 

"Has anybody told you you're horrible?" 

"Has anybody told you you keep repeating yourself? Maybe you're getting senile." 

"Horrible," Joona repeated, and bent down to kiss Hannu, second time that night. Better to just shut him up. Better not to think, for the time being. Maybe things would look different in daylight. Some quiet voice in the back of Joona's head doubted it, but that could shut up, too. 

He kissed Hannu harder.

Second time that night, Hannu let him. 

* 

"... if that's what the universe wants me to be, I'll be it," Hannu said, kicking snow over the remains of the campfire. Joona bundled up the pile of sticks that had lasted the night - someone in Hokanniemi could always use the firewood and be spared a visit to the forest for it. "It's not like I have a choice. But it doesn't mean I have to like it." 

"Hey," Joona said, blinking against the sun glare on the ice at the shore. "So you think it's… really the end of the world, like in that poem Paju keeps throwing at us. _The Second Coming_ or whatever it's called. 'Surely the Second Coming is at hand, surely some Revelation is at hand'..."

"It's her uncle's fault, or whatever he is, minister guy. All the religious preachings. Funny that _he_ got no powers, he was crying his eyes out in Tuonela when we got there, and he probably won't like this any better, if all the folktale stuff is coming to life now." 

"Hm. He'll probably just have to deal until we're all dead. If it's really the Second Coming, then we're not going to be alive much longer." Try as he might to keep it theoretical, Joona couldn't help a sigh. He liked being alive. If nothing else, the night had proved that much. 

To his surprise, Hannu laughed. Just briefly, and it sounded just this side of forced, but he'd thrown back the hood of his parka and tilted his head into the sun, so it silhouetted his profile against the rising light.

For a moment, Joona found it hard to tear his eyes away. Then he stopped trying and drank in the sight instead. 

"I really don't think it is," Hannu said. "What's the point of getting magic if we're all going to die anyway? Still might," he added as an afterthought. "If we catch the Rash Illness somehow, or we fall down a slope and bash our heads in on a rock or something. But I really don't think it's meant to be the end of the world, or the Second Coming, or anything like it. That's not how the universe works. If it wanted us dead we'd already be. It'll be hard, and I really don't want to deal with it, but I think we'll get through this somehow." 

"You think?" Joona shouldered his backpack, and Hannu picked up the canvas bag, now much lighter than when they'd come. They'd decided to leave the bear traps in place, in case someone else did try and claim Anna-Stiinan Luoto - they'd stayed undisturbed for the rest of the night, and Hannu had declared that he did want to try building there once winter was over.

"I think." 

"... okay. I'll trust you on that. I don't mind if it's not perfect. It doesn't need to be. As long as _someone_ thinks we'll make it… especially if that someone happens to be my boyfriend, or something like that, and he's a pessimist jerk with magic who shouldn't be talking this way without making me wonder if it's really still him..." 

"... I'll send my fox to eat the face of anybody who doesn't think we'll make it," Hannu replied, sticking his tongue out at the village while they picked their way back to the shore, where the boat lay waiting.

"Your _what_?" Joona couldn't help the laughter. " _The_ Fox?!" 

"NO!" 

"Calm down, I'm just teasing!" Joona ducked a clump of snow that came flying his way, sprinting through the underbrush in spite of his luggage. "Race you to the boat, loser gets to row!" 

In spite of all the revelations of the past night - and the morning - he thought as he slipped and skidded across the ice toward the vessel, laughing and clutching his stick bundle for balance as Hannu yelled obscenities after him, some things - the best things - wouldn't ever change.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope yuu enjoyed! ♥ Obvious poem/title origin is obvious, many thanks to A. and K. for their help.


End file.
